Hugh Bollinger / Monday, August 1, 2011

What happened to those big guys?

One of the longest debates in human evolution and anthropology is: "what happened to the Neanderthals?". It seems the question may now have been answered by new research from the University of Cambridge in the UK. [caption id="attachment_6117" align="aligncenter" width="572" caption="Neanderthal & modern human (source: German Institute of Anthropology)"]

[/caption] It is well known that modern humans-- Homo sapiens sapiens --arrived in Europe ~100,000 years ago and met our big cousins-- Homo sapiens neanderthalensis --already living there. By ~25-35,000 years ago, the neanderthals had disappeared. Theories abound: there were more of us; we killed them in battles; we had more developed language skills; we had bigger and better hunting tools; we had sex with them that diluted their genes; they moved away; all of the above. The new research supports the last theory. Confronted by the incoming modern humans entering their territories, the capacity of the indigenous Neanderthals to compete for the same living sites, the same food supplies, and the same fuel supplies during harsh glacial winters, undermined the neanderthals life style. Conflicts between the two human groups-- this wouldn’t be the first or last time –-would be obvious and the increased numbers and the coordinated activities of the modern humans ensured their success over the Neanderthals. An earlier discovery found that neanderthal tools hadn't evolved in 50,000 years and the new research suggests that the incoming modern humans possessed superior hunting technologies. Dr. Paul Mellars, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Archaeology at Cambridge, says: "it was clearly this range of new technological and behavioral innovations which allowed modern human populations to invade and survive in much larger numbers than those of the preceding Neanderthals across the whole of the European continent." We must have appreciated something about our cousins since genetic analysis shows humans had sex with neanderthals in DNA studies that were also announced recently. Between 1-4 percent of neanderthal DNA is still present within us today. You can see how neanderthal genes may have contributed to your own physical make-up by trying a computer application developed by the Smithsonian, MEanderthal. It's revealing how far those big guys actually traveled! WHB

Good News Turtle People to the rescue, again

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Tags: anthropology human evolution MEanderthal modern humans Neanderthals

What happened to those big guys?

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